Discussions By Condition: Cardiovascular disease

Left arm pain and other issues.

I'm a 22 year old male, weight about 270lb (I'm working on it), 6' 2" and I've been dealing with some (hopefully) anxiety related chest pains for almost a year now. I've had ECG's and blood tests which have all been normal according to the doctors I've seen, but my doctor has ordered an echo cardiogram for tomorrow to confirm no problems. The last week or so I've also been having left arm pain from my neck down to my shoulder and up to the forearm, but no chest pain. It's mild and can last for hours or even most of the day, but I can't find a sore muscle anywhere. It does not seem to be effected by physical activity as I've been helping my friend move all day and during some of the heavier lifting I've actually not felt it at all. I do work as a programmer and system administrator so my computer use is 8-12 hours a day and I have a fairly high stress job.

I will hopefully have my cardiac answer tomorrow, but I would still like to hear what peoples experience is with this kind of pain. As I understand it Angina should go away within 5 minutes of rest so if this were unstable angina before a heart attack I should probably already be dead right? I'm going to see my doctor about this pain as well, but any ideas or input would help.

2 Replies:

Hey, I also have had chest pain, along with arm pain and some palpitations. I went and got a spiral CT, to make sure it wasn't a pulmonary embolism, troponin to rule out a heart attack, and EKG. All of them were normal. I never thought of myself as being anxious, but beginning to contemplate it. Hmmm... My PFT (pulmonary function test) was a bit abnormal with a larger than normal total lung capacity and decreased diffusion capasity. I don't know if that is relevant to what I am having. Let me know how this turns out, ok? You can mail be at breadm@hotmail.com.

I had the ultrasound of my heart performed early this month at what is supposed to be a very good facility and everything seems to be fine. Doctors are all still insisting that it's work stress and there is nothing wrong with me. Now that I've had this much testing done I'm fairly certain they are right which alone makes me feel a lot better though my family medical history still looms over me... I haven't had chest pain in about 3-4 weeks. I think taking a vacation to see my family helped. I still get arm/wrist pain, but I think it can be attributed to the thousands of key strokes I make every day at work (I bet I type more code than a lot of secretaries type memos.) Because when I was on vacation I didn't use a computer more than a few minutes a day to copy some photos from my camera and free up the sd card and my arm did not hurt. So now I'm trying to find some solutions to the arm pain via changing my posture and taking more breaks from typing. Any suggestions on that would be greatly appreciated.